‘McClendon and me’

For our IBTS Community Blog readers today we have a ‘confessional piece’  of our precious colleague, IBTS Senior Research Fellow, Ian M Randall. Enjoy! Since 1999, when I first started teaching at IBTS, I have regarded the enthusiasm of some of my colleagues for the thinking of James Wm. McClendon, Jr. as something that was fine for them. But I did not see McClendon as having any particular significance for me in my historical work. Three things this year have caused me to change my mind. In each case I was preparing a paper for a conference. The first conference was in April 2008 and was organised by the Center of Global…